The 1943-44 Hazleton High School boys basketball team, head coach Hughie McGeehan, center, and assistant coach Frank Serany, lower right, celebrate after beating Allentown for the East Penn League championship at Reading High School in March 1944. The Mountaineers advanced to the PIAA Class A final, where they lost to Duquesne, 43-35.

Feb. 25 will always hold a special place in the hearts of Hazleton High School basketball fans.

It was on that date in 1971 when the Mountaineers completed a remarkable late-season surge to their final East Penn League championship, thanks to a 74-63 victory over Allentown Allen at then brand, spanking new Martz Hall at the DHH Lengel Middle School in Pottsville. They celebrated by jumping in the school's pool.

Three games and two and a half weeks later, the Mounts took another celebratory dip in the Pottsville pool after their 65-60 win over Northampton gave the locals their first District 11 Class A championship since 1944. (Remember that year.)

Fast forward to Feb. 25, 1986, when the Mountaineers capped another late-season run to a league crown. This one, a 54-49 nail-biter over Nanticoke, gave HHS its very first - of what would be many - Wyoming Valley Conference Division I championships.

The clincher was just one of several wins for the 1985-86 Mounts which left their swelling legion of fans limp from excitement and the community anticipating more of the same in the years that followed.

Yet, for all the success that both the 1970-71 and 1985-86 Hazleton High teams enjoyed, neither advanced as far as the 1943-44 Mounts did. If not for a hotly debated coaching decision, they very well could have brought home HHS' fourth state championship.

While we'll never know if that would have been the case, we do want to pay homage to three of the Mountaineers' greatest basketball teams.

Ever.

Eastern champs

The Hazleton High boys basketball team of 1943-44 is still considered one of the best ever to wear the Blue and White.

For good reason.

"Time after time they (the Mountaineers) fought back in the face of what seemed like insurmountable odds to come out on top,'' Janus 1944, the school's yearbook, reads. "What they may have lacked in some respects, they more than made up with in courage.''

At no time was the Mounts' courage more evident than when an injury to star forward Carl "Red'' Meinhold left them shorthanded for the state final against Duquesne.

Shorthanded, but not short of heart.

"Despite not having ace player "Red'' Meinhold in that all-important last game, the Mounts' courage and fight kept them in it until the very end and almost won the game for them,'' according to the Janus.

HHS opened the 1943-44 season with a tough 46-44 loss to non-league foe Luzerne on Dec. 10, 1943. After six exhibition games, the Mounts' record was a respectable, though certainly not overly impressive, 4-2.

When East Penn League play began, Hazleton was one of six teams in the league, joining Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, Pottsville and Tamaqua. The Mountaineers went 4-1 in the first half, losing by only two points to Easton in their final game of the first half.

The Mounts finished in a tie with Allentown atop the league standings. Any league playoffs, if necessary, were played after the regular season at that time.

Hazleton's only second-half loss came against Allentown at the Little Palestra in Allentown. The Mounts and Canaries again both ended with 4-1 records, so both halves ended in ties between the long-time league rivals.

On Feb. 29, 1944 in Reading, Allentown beat Hazleton by 12 points in a playoff for the first-half title. Three nights later, back in Reading, the Mounts returned the favor by whipping Allentown by 11 to capture the second-half crown.

Then on March 8 - for the third time in nine days - Hazleton and Allentown met again at Reading High School for the overall league championship. There, the Mounts defeated the Canaries 33-31 in a white-knuckler.

Allentown led by three points late in the game when Al DeGatis' basket and a Jim Munroe free throw tied it at 31. Munroe then scored the game-winner on "a beautiful cut in.'' After a Canary miss, the Mounts "put on a beautiful exhibition of freezing the ball until the game ended'' according to a game account in the Plain Speaker the following day.

Since only league champions advanced to the District 11 tournament back then, the Mounts moved on while Allentown went home.

Hazleton easily passed its first district test, routing Minersville 70-25 on March 11. Three nights later, the Mountaineers eliminated Frackville 35-29 in the semifinals at Rockne Hall in Allentown.

Another trip to Allentown for the district title game produced the same result as the Mounts cruised past Palmerton 50-29.

With its game in high gear, Hazleton thumped District 2 champion-Swoyersville 52-21 to open interdistrict play, setting up a showdown with long-time foe Lower Merion in the PIAA Eastern Class A final.

On March 29, the Mounts lowered the boom on Ardmore Aces 59-31 before 12,000 fans at Convention Hall in Philadelphia.

"The Hazleton team was giving an exhibition, the likes of which had never been seen in high school basketball,'' Janus sports editor Richard Evans wrote for his yearbook.

HHS led 45-17 after three quarters, shortly before its legendary coach Hughie McGeehan may have made his only coaching blunder in all his glorious years at Hazleton.

That decision likely cost the Mounts their fourth state championship under McGeehan since 1928.

With the game well in hand late in the fourth quarter and Meinhold already scoring 25 points, he twisted his knee and had to be helped off the court. There were only about 90 seconds left when the injury occurred. Old-timers still contend Meinhold never should have been on the floor with a 25-point lead that late in the game.

"He had played flawless basketball,'' Evans wrote. "Many newspaper men claimed his performance was the best ever seen in high school basketball.''

But when Hazleton met Wesrtern champ-Duquesne for the state title back at Convention Hall in Philadelphia, Meinhold did not play, for his injured knee did not respond to treatment. Sophomore Neil Cusat played admirably as Meinhold's replacement with eight points, 10 rebounds and three blocked shots.

However, Duquesne won 43-35.

"Hazleton, despite the loss of a key player, played a nice game and went down fighting,'' Evans wrote. "A jittery first quarter was their (the Mounts') undoing, and they were unable to overcome the lead built up by Duquesne. The Little Dukes won the title, but the Mountaineers received the plaudits of everyone there for the beautiful exhibition of courage and good basketball they displayed.''

For years and decades, there's been debate among local basketball fans: Would the Mounts have beaten Duquesne with Meinhold? Nobody knows for sure, of course, but the fact remains that Meinhold and DeGatis both were named to the Associated Press All-State first team and Meinhold remains the only local player to reach the NBA to this day.

Ed McCluskey, Meinhold and DeGatis made the East Penn League All-Star Team.

Together, they led the Mounts to a 21-win season, one victory away from the state's ultimate prize.

It truly was a season to remember.

"Duquense will be remembered as the state champion, but our beloved Mountaineers will always be 'champions' to us,'' the 1944 Janus reads.

'Nine in a row or we don't go'

HHS head coach Dave Shafer and his 1970-71 Mountaineers needed a pick-me-up after they lost by two points at Pottsville in their 13th game that season. The Mounts had easily defeated the Crimson Tide (61-45) at home to open the season.

Thirteen games later, they were 10-3 with their other losses to Allentown Dieruff (by 10) and Allentown Central Catholic (by one) in first-half play of the East Penn League. The loss to the Tide to start the second half of the league was extremely disappointing. It made the 30-mile ride home from Pottsville much longer. HHS simply could not afford another loss. It was now or never for the Mounts to turn their season from good to great.

That's when Shafer told his team they needed to win "nine in a row or we don't go'' to the playoffs.

It became the Mounts' mantra.

No team except for Easton had come within 15 points of the Mounts in their first 10 games - and the Red Rovers lost by 11. HHS easily handled West Hazleton (83-61) and Bishop Hafey (83-59). But then they lost the first-half title of the league and their second-half opener.

The Clark Kent-to-Superman conversion started in Game 14 with an 11-point win over Bethlehem Freedom at St Joseph's gym. Then came a tremendous make-or-break, overtime win over the Allentown Allen Canaries at the Little Palestra in Allentown. The Mounts were down by 10 points with less than three minutes left, but rallied for a 62-60 victory, which definitely was the pivotal game of the 1970-71 season.

The Blue and White were on their way.

HHS followed with a 20-point win over Phillipsburg, a 24-point rout of Easton and a heart-stomping victory over Dieruff at St. Joe's gym that always stands out in fans' minds when talking about that season.

In a tie game, Wally "the Wonder" Kisthardt was freezing the ball by himself with a dribbling exhibition that started with 40 seconds to go before a packed and sweaty gym that was now in a frenzy.

With 12 seconds left, Kisthardt was fouled. He went to the line for a one-and-one. He made the front end to put the Mounts up 66-65, but he missed his second shot. Dieruff got the ball and called timeout. Hazleton fans - especially Paul "First Row" Petruzzi - were absolutely cautious. Husky star Ross Moore, who already had 24 points, would certainly get a chance to score.

With 3,200-plus screaming fans on their feet, the Huskies inbounded the ball under the Mounts basket. They held the ball for four seconds before moving toward the basket when Mike Zambelli was called for a walk. Kisthardt then dribbled away the final eight ticks under the Dieruff basket until the buzzer finally sounded. The Mounts were 5-1 in the league's second half and still very much alive in their quest for a playoff berth.

Following that thrilling victory, the Mounts trounced ACC at home (71-65), before conducting a clinic in Tamaqua (105-65).

Next was Mike "the Hulk" Hartenstine, who looked like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger, and his Bethlehem Liberty Hurricanes. HHS won at home 64-58, before clinching the second-half flag with a 67-54 win at Bethlehem Catholic. Allen had beaten Dieruff in a playoff for the first-half title, so now the Canaries and Hazleton would clash for the East Penn League's overall championship at Martz Hall.

The Mounts trailed 14-1 before storming back to win fairly handily (74-63); it was their third victory over the Canaries that season. The third gave the Mounts their first league crown since the 1959-60 season.

Then came the District 11 Class A playoffs.

North Schuylkill proved to be no problem (69-45). Then it was West Hazleton, a team that lost to the Mounts by 22

points in December. However, this time it was a completely different game in front of one of the largest crowds ever to file into Martz Hall (more than 5,600).

The Wildcats appeared to be an upset winner, but Hazleton pulled it out 57-55. A brawl erupted with two seconds to go when Kisthardt was fouled hard, before cooler heads prevailed.

Northampton and Hazleton met next for the district title and the Mountaineers again rallied in the final stanza to pull it out (65-60). Jerry Fallabel rimmed 27 points to give the Mountaineers their eighth district title, but their first since 1944.

Hazleton was given virtually no chance to upset Norristown, its next opponent, in the Eastern semifinals at the Harrisburg Farm Show Arena. The Eagles, a team that included future All-American Henry Williams, defeated HHS 54-49, but only after the Mounts put up a stiff battle until the final minutes. The Eagles later lost to Pittsburgh Schenley in the state title game.

It was a great year to be a Hazleton follower. Even the Mountaineer junior varsity team was tremendous. The Liberty JVs were down by 40 and froze the ball at St Joe's so Hazleton - which was coached by head football coach Adam Siemenski - would not score 100 points.

The 1970-71 Mountaineers team had the ability to whip the fans into a fever pitch. New fans came out of the woodwork, especially for the playoff games.

Postseason awards included United Press International All-State Third Team honors for Kisthardt and an all-state honorable mention for Fallabel. Both Kisthardt and Fallabel made the East Penn League All-Star first team and Liott was chosen for the second team.

"That was such an exciting year and the whole city seemed to rally around our trip to Harrisburg to take on powerhouse Norristown with sharpshooters Henry Williams and "Doc" Holiday,'' Kisthardt recalled.

"People chartered busses to attend that game. Full-page ads of support in the newspaper... We lost the game by five points, but the little guys from Hazleton gave heavily favored Norristown all they wanted.''

A new era

Could there ever have been such a Hazleton basketball team?

T-shirts with players' caricatures? A song on the radio?

A rookie coach, wearing thick glasses, full of vim and vigor, excited to be directing the show in his hometown?

Unforgettable moments like a near-riot, a desecrated sign, a police escort through Scranton? Hordes of adoring fans waiting to get into the King's College Scandlon Gymnasium and many others listening to the games on their radios back home?

Above all, games to test the nerves.

Yes!

Players such as Mike Joseph, sophomores Bobby K (Krizansky) and Christian Fornataro, three Jimmys (Burke, Seamon and Matteo), Ray Bradish, who played tackle on the football team, Scott Nicholas, who had the nerve to eat an orange one night at Bishop Hoban when the Mountaineers weren't playing well, and Lew Bognet, who ran on the King's court to celebrate a key Hazleton basket while the game was going on.

They were the 1985-86 Hazleton Mountaineers of Bruce Leib - his first team since returning home from Colorado to be the head coach at his alma mater.

Local basketball fans should be eternally grateful that those Mounts had outstanding individual performances, repeatedly made unbelievable comebacks, won several close games and became Hazleton's first Wyoming Valley Conference champions.

"Memories? There were lots of memories," said Joseph, now entering his eighth season as Hazleton Area's head boys basketball coach. "It was the greatest year of my life."

It was this team that stamped the Mounts' move from the East Penn Conference north as legitimate and respectable.

It was this team that truly won over a town.

"It's something that may never capture this area again," Leib said in a 1996 interview. "The success of that team was a surprise to everyone. Since then, it has become expected every year."

Even the most casual Hazleton fan has little trouble recalling the great Hazleton or Hazleton Area players and moments of recent years. But he or she may not remember specifics of Leib's remarkable first year.

"Part of that is (we had) no returning starters," Leib said. "Not even Mike Joseph (Dr. Mike to fans and the media) started the year before and he ended up scoring 700-plus points."

In one season.

"I had heard that he was a good player," Leib said. "I didn't know how he was until I got here and saw him in a summer league game. I was really impressed and very surprised at his abilities."

Leib had his program's cornerstone.

"It just seemed like this kid was hidden," Leib said. "I don't think his talents were ever allowed to come out as far as giving him the ball and letting the team around him flourish.

"That's what I planned on doing without even seeing the rest of the players. This kid had to have the ball in his hands. The idea of the point guard around here was that he had to be a slower, set-up kid."

That is, until Leib gave Joseph the ball.

He surrounded his new lead actor with a talented yet inexperienced supporting cast, namely Burke, a senior long-range marksman, Nicholas, an athletic 6-foot-4 junior center, and a pair of promising sophomores in forward Krizansky, who recovered from a summer car accident to offer glimpses of his future greatness, and Fornataro, an unselfish guard who, like his teammates, played his role to the hilt.

"Two sophomores started the first game and that was never done at Hazleton," Leib said.

His first team also had an able bench, led by Seamon, a versatile 6-3 senior forward, Matteo, a reliable guard and Bradish, who Leib told would strictly be "practice player" after coming over from the football team. Before the season ended, Bradish became a valuable role player.

"I think we had a whole bunch of role players who meshed together and went over everybody's expectations," Fornataro said in 1996.

If he had never done anything else that first year, Leib achieved lasting recognition for his pep talks.

"We're here to build a program'' his players remembered him saying. Indeed, Leib came back home to build a state-renowned program for the long haul.

"He almost demanded that respect from his players from day one," Fornataro said. "He set the tone early - that this is a first-class basketball team."

It was that discipline - from having players wear ties to school on game days to no-frills practices - that allowed the Mounts and later the Cougars to keep their poise under relentless pressure.

Leib's methods, his preachiness, his fanatical devotion to the work ethic may not win him loyalty from a wealthy NBA player, but his first Hazleton team digested his every word.

"The only thing he did say as far as team goals was we would not be outplayed, we would not be outhustled and we would not be out-conditioned," Burke recalled in a 1996 interview. "The wins, the conference (championship) he pretty much left up to us."

The early wins came easily - surprisingly, it seemed.

After a month of non-league games, the Mounts' record was 6-2, with their only losses a tough 45-43 setback at Lancaster McCaskey and a 72-53 whipping at the hands of eventual East Penn Conference champ Emmaus in the Hornets' holiday tournament.

Once conference play started, Hazleton held on to edge Coughlin (72-70) at St. Joseph's gym. Fornataro didn't miss a shot in nine attempts from the floor and finished with 26 points.

"I remember after we lost that game . . . a friend of mine at school said, 'Some year we're gonna win that league up there, but we're gonna have to be real good to do it,' " Leib said.

The Mounts ended up doing it that year and they ended being real good, too.

After the Nanticoke debacle, they didn't lose again until Bishop Hoban whipped them (81-62) in their next-to-last conference on Valentine's Day 1986, all but ending their WVC title hopes. It was at halftime of that game when Leib took an orange from Nicholas's mouth, or so the story goes.

"We always had oranges at halftime to replenish our systems," Nicholas remembered. "I was the first one to take an orange that night. He (Leib) sort of took it off me."

"He was speaking about getting into the playoffs, but here we were getting killed," Fornataro said. "I think coach told Scott he didn't deserve to be eating an orange."

The Mounts however, caught a break in the regular season's final round of games. First-half champion Nanticoke, whom Hazleton edged, 74-73, in their second-half meeting at St. Joe's, knocked off Bishop Hoban to force a three-way tie between the Mounts, Argents and Trojans for the second-half title.

"All Nanticoke had to do was lose to Hoban and we were out of it," Seamon said.

So, a mere six days after the Argents had crushed Hazleton, the same two teams met again at King's College, thanks to a coin toss that favored Nanticoke - one that league officials did without Leib or Hazleton representatives present.

The Hoban/Mounts' winner then had the unenviable task of having to beat Nanticoke twice in four days.

Not only did Hazleton avenge its loss to the Argents, but it nipped the Trojans, 57-56, on Joseph's rainbow over Guffrovich that went round and round the rim at the King's gym before falling through the basket with a couple seconds left - a shot that some contend kicked the resurgence of Hazleton basketball into high gear, and firmly established Joseph as the WVC's premier player that season.

"That was the game," Leib said. "Mike proved in front of 3,500 people that, as fine a player as Paul Guffrovich was, Mike was the guy that particular year."

"That sticks out in my mind more than anything from that year," Fornataro said. "The next game was easy after that."

Not exactly.

Joseph picked up three quick fouls and Nanticoke had the chance to pounce on the Mounts early in the overall title game.

"He (Joseph) had to be calmed down," Leib remembered. "His Syrian-Italian temper got the better of him. My German-Italian (temper) got the better of me. So we had a little meeting on the court, while Jimmy Matteo came in and did a great job without me watching the game because I was dealing with Mike's temper."

Leib threatened to keep his star guard on the bench if he didn't keep his emotions in check. But when Joseph re-entered the contest, he kept his cool, scored 30 points and the Mounts won their first WVC championship, 54-49.

There was utter pandemonium among Hazleton fans inside the gym.

Cars honked their horns all along the 25-mile route from Wilkes-Barre back to Hazleton.

And then there was the sign.

As Hazleton fans and the team bus rode home, they noticed the sign on Route 309 leading to the Interstate 81 on-ramp - the one that says "HAZLETON, NANTICOKE SOUTH." Some enthusiastic fan or fans attached the final score of the championship game.

Without the benefit of a GPS back then, an out-of-state truck driver probably got lost on the interstate that night looking for Hazleton.

Nobody in Hazleton cared.

After a week-long layoff, the Mounts coasted past Abington Heights in the District 2 semifinals. They'd play against Scranton Central for the title on the Eagles' home floor - the steamy Scranton CYC.

Hazleton trailed by 16 points at halftime, before they rallied behind Joseph. The Mounts finally caught the Eagles early in the fourth quarter and the teams then swapped leads until clutch foul shooting by Joseph and Matteo helped the Mounts wear their third straight district crown.

But an ugly incident marred the victory celebration. A hard foul on Matteo tipped the heightened tensions between the teams over the edge. When Nicholas grabbed the game's final rebound and flicked it near an Eagle player, a near-riot ensued.

"Scott Nicholas was probably our 'tough' guy," recalled Krizansky, now the Hazleton Area School District's assistant business manager. "Me being a sophomore, I saw no fear in Scott's eyes. I kind of stood by him."

Officials from both schools and security guards ran onto the floor.

A woman took a swing at Chris Perry, Hazleton's athletic director at the time.

"I remember that altercation very well," Matteo said. "There were a lot of tensions running high that night."

The Mounts were forced to wait several minutes before coming out of their lockerroom for the post-game awards ceremony. They later needed a police escort through Scranton, which didn't stop rocks from being hurled at the team bus.

The excitement was far from over.

Four days later, Hazleton fans made one final trip to Wilkes-Barre - for a PIAA Class AAAA opening-round game against District 1 power Upper Dublin.

If the Scranton Central comeback had fans needing CPR, the Upper Dublin game had them making appointments with a cardiologist.

The trash-talking Cardinals had the Mounts buried in a 24-point, third-quarter hole.

"Definitely the greatest comeback I've ever been involved in," Leib said. "I don't think I've ever heard a crowd louder than that. We had 3,300 people in the gym and 3,250 were from the Hazleton area. I remember their coach asking me, 'Did you have to close your town?'''

After that game, they very well could have shut Hazleton down.

"They had two guards who tried to intimidate Mike Joseph outside our lockerroom before that game," Leib recalled. "They wanted to rub it in before we even the played the game."

Through the first two and a half quarters, Joseph's antagonists had talked the talk and walked the walk. But somebody forgot to tell them that basketball games are four quarters long.

"That final 12 minutes was really something," Leib said. "I remember the feeling when the kids cut it to 10 and how proud I was of them. I just thought, 'What a great finish to a great season. If we lose, we lose.'''

"They were just in awe of Mike," Leib said. "They couldn't believe what they were seeing - that a kid who didn't look that good outside the lockerroom - was one of the best guards in the state."

The Mounts ran out of miracles after the Upper Dublin game and fell to Harrisburg 81-54 in the Eastern quarterfinals.

They finished 25-5, but combined with HHS' 37 wins the previous two seasons, began a new legacy.

"I knew the standard was set," Leib said. "I told the kids at the banquet and at the camps that year we don't want to look back - we want to look ahead.''

The Mounts did exactly that.

But it was quite a ride during that 1985-86 season.

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